"Gold Standard" Slaughtermaps?

Hey all,

I'm quite behind on the slaughter scene, so I figured I'd get y'all's* thoughts on what the "gold standard" slaughter set(s) happen to be these days. What are the big "must play"s and "here's how you do it right"s? Is Sunder still in the starting lineup or has it been demoted to the bench? All that jazz.

It's intentionally a sort of broad question, and the answer in advance to any "well, what in particular are you looking for?" questions is "dunno yet." Consider this a window shopping experience (and a chance to share yer favorites, I s'pose).

[*pardon my Texan.]

nuts.wad

OP mentions Sunder but not Sunlust - if this hasn't been played by a Xaser yet then that's definitely something to fix.

Others that have been worth a play imho:

Stardate 20X6/20X7 - Super pretty and relentless.

Combat Shock 1 & 2 - Short but heavy-duty.

Speed of Doom - Joshy's megawad: starts out kinda slow but very quickly picks up difficulty. Latter half gets ridic.

Resurgence - As above, but even more punishing. I personally wasn't able to finish this but don't mind that I suck

Thanks there! I'm quite far behind, yeah. :P

I know n' love Combat Shock 2, at least, so that's a measuring bar of sorts. Should probably give it a replay soon, while on that topic.

This is a good recent thread on the subject -- plenty of stuff there. 

Damn, I figured there'd be a thread like this somewhere, but I couldn't quite find the right terms to search for. Thanks for the linkage.

36 minutes ago, Xaser said:

[image]

I laughed way harder than I should have at that image.

I'll shamelessly plug my own Quantum Strike, if you don't mind high-contrast visuals and the occasional Afrit. HMP is highly recommended.

Can there be a Xaser slaughtermap?One can dream.

Jimmy got all the major ones I could think of (+1 to each of those).

You can't go wrong with Rush also (especially the last few maps).

2 hours ago, Catpho said:

Can there be a Xaser slaughtermap?One can dream.

I feel like there's something in the TTV!Zone collection which fits this description.

I've heard it argued that Sunlust isn't slaughter...which I don't know that I agree with. But yeah, anything by Ribbiks or Danne is still pretty much the gold standard. Sunder is regarded as an influential classic, but I do get the impression that it's been demoted somewhat on the "actually fun to play" scale.

Breathless and Cryogenics are two that have been released very recently. Oscillation and Disjunction from last year are both very good, though again, YMMV on whether you can call them slaughter mapsets, as they start off milder and get crazy toward the end.

I think slaughter has evolved quite a bit over time since things like Sunder were made. Sunder for instance is still stunning visually, but it is not something I would recommend to someone who wants to get into that sort of genre, since a lot of sunder's fights lean heavily towards grind when compared to "modern slaughter", which would include things like Rush, Newgothic Movement 2, and other more fast paced maps.

But the thing is that there is no such thing as a "gold standard" for slaughter. Personally I prefer faster maps, with relatively high lethalty, and as little monotonous grind as possible. People like OkuPlok are on the other side of the spectrum in some sense, because "untitled" surely is quite a grindfest, so assuming people make maps the way they like them, some folks surely are into that sort of grind.

I think it's best to figure out individually what manner of slaughter gameplay you're into. Makes it much easier to recommend anything that suits your tastes, you know?

Also, @Not Jabba SunLust isn't a slaughter.wad, it just so happens it has some slaughtermaps in it.

Most popular candidates these days seem to be Rush and Newgothic Movement 2 (both of which I personally think are underwhelming, and I'm also really confused by NIH saying that NGMV2 has high lethality and low grind, but whatever).

And, yeah, Sunlust isn't slaughter aside from a couple of late-game maps.  It's more influenced by Death-Destiny, who himself mostly evolved on the style of the Chord series.

8 minutes ago, Cynical said:

I'm also really confused by NIH saying that NGMV2 has high lethality and low grind, but whatever.

I am really confused by you thinking that I actually said that. I said I like high lethalty fast paced slaughter, I did not say that NG2 is exactly that, but NG2 is certainly less grindy than Sunder overall, I would argue, not that there aren't outliers...

EDIT:I literally put my thoughts about NG2 or rush in an entirely seperate paragraph than my personal preferences. I mean, come on, how could you misread that?

While I do think Sunder should probably be on the bench (or, if we're using baseball as a reference point, it should be playing in the NPB as a once-exciting but now old and retiring MLB player), it still has a wild flavor that I think is important to slaughter and is often neglected in more polished slaughter wads. It's sometimes grindy, sometimes not very threatening, sometimes cheesable, sometimes straight up broken, and it's very inconsistent, but I think all that stuff contributes to the aesthetic and the player's experience. Slaughter maps should seem unreasonable and unpredictable and wild, even if they actually are reasonable and well-tested.

Grind is something that seems universally frowned upon, but I think it's an important ingredient to mix in. Grind can serve as a buffer between fast and slow strats, or can be a relaxing denouement after an intense battle, or a test of focus and consistency. Fights with cheese strats are also frowned upon, but cheese can be rewarding for a player to discover, especially when it lets them pass a seemingly unreasonable and broken fight. It's cool when there are easy and slow strats as well as fast, flashy, and dangerous strats.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is... Sunder.

2 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I am really confused by you thinking that I actually said that. I said I like high lethalty fast paced slaughter, I did not say that NG2 is exactly that, but NG2 is certainly less grindy than Sunder overall, I would argue, not that there aren't outliers...

No way is it less grindy than Sunder, aside from Sunder's absolute worst moments (The Furnace, The Cage, The Hag's Finger).  Sunder's layouts tend to funnel monsters at you more efficiently, while what I played of NGMV2 (the first 5 maps) mostly consisted of either shooting monsters that literally couldn't attack me because of poorly-planned arena shapes (Map 02 after the BFG grab and clearing the Manc room, the poorly-conceived "big O shape" at the start of map 03, etc.) or endlessly running in circles around the rim of yet another painfully dull example of the "monster stadium seating" design anti-pattern.

ToD's maps are still very much worth look, I'd say. A bunch collected here.

Slaughtermaps are not really my cup of tea personally, but from what I've seen, I would tend to agree with @durian about ToD's work and @Not Jabba's statement about ribbiks.

Also, they may be getting long in the tooth, but what about Deus Vult and Deus Vult II ?

I would also add Saturnine Chapel on UV to the list.

8 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

I think it's best to figure out individually what manner of slaughter gameplay you're into. Makes it much easier to recommend anything that suits your tastes, you know?

I don't yet know what slaughter "sub-genre" I prefer, 'cause my exposure is pretty limited. One of my big goals with this thread is to figure it out -- it's sort of a chicken-and-egg, really. :P

Fortunately, the way to fix it is to try things, and now I've got a bunch queued up. Thanks for the suggestions, all! :D

Can't figure out if this is a parody of people making same threads about slaughter or a serious request.

@Spectre01I missed this, screenshots looks worth. I download

18 minutes ago, Memfis said:

Can't figure out if this is a parody of people making same threads about slaughter or a serious request.

What?

Recently there are lot of people talking about Slaughterwads, not sure why as well as they exists for at least a decade now.

And i can guess you're looking for SSG/Rocket Launcher tier of slaughtermaps? Well myself never liked too much the BFG tier ones as well, but i think you can try Hell Revealed 2, Necropia 2010 and Dark Tartarus they are all more reliant on infighting and SSG/RL to clean up the remaining monsters rather than just keep BFGing everyone.

1 hour ago, Catpho said:

Can there be a Xaser slaughtermap?One can dream.

Maybe he can make a slaughter map for the vinesauce mapping contest this year, the final encounter in the map he made for the last one was kind of a little slaughter-ish so I have no doubt he could do it if he wanted to

Just now, Zanieon said:

Recently there are lot of people talking about Slaughterwads, not sure why as well as they exists for at least a decade now.

 

And i can guess you're looking for SSG/Rocket Launcher tier of slaughtermaps? Well myself never liked too much the BFG tier ones as well, but i think you can try Hell Revealed 2, Necropia 2010 and Dark Tartarus they are all more reliant on infighting and SSG/RL to clean up the remaining monsters rather than just keep BFGing everyone.

It could have been because of the combat shock 2 ironman last month (I think that was last months wad right, I didn't participate so I don't remember the specifics of it :D)

for the record (after playing through some of the suggestions on the thread I made) my absolute favorites minus the obvious fantastic Ribbiks stuff were...

Italo-Doom. (shit, broke my own rules) but no really it's such a fun ride that'll leave you bloody, bruised, and in pain... but it's so much fun

phmlspd was the only other one I went through within the past month or so, and it was a lotta fun.

6 hours ago, Xaser said:

I don't yet know what slaughter "sub-genre" I prefer, 'cause my exposure is pretty limited.

I am gonna be tooting my own horn here to some degree, I'm gonna have to agree with Bioshockfan90 on phmlspd.wad. It might not be the most intricate and detailed set of maps out there, neither is it the most difficult one out there (which kinda makes it good for getting into the genre, imo), but it offers some good variety in terms of maps and gameplay styles.

Map 12 happens to be my personal favourite in the set, and even though the run below isn't the most elegant ones I've made, it should at least give you a basic idea what to expect from the set:
 

19 hours ago, Catpho said:

Can there be a Xaser slaughtermap?One can dream.

I found dead.air to be quite slaughtery. At the very least, the encounters feature plenty of enemies to kill with the new weapons, despite infighting not being a major focus.